Kolkata: Bank loan default by companies in West Bengal amounted to Rs 4,967 crore till the second quarter of last fiscal involving 437 accounts in excess of Rs 1 crore, according to a list issued by All India Bank Employees Association.
The list contained names of several prominent companies whose operations were mostly confined to the state, and the banks included both public and private.
The association said in a statement today that the names of defaulters should be published by the RBI and make wilful default a criminal offence.
The statement said that till September 2013, the amount of bad loans of public sector banks stood at Rs 2.36 lakh crore.
Over the last seven years, accrued bad loans of the banksstood at Rs 4.95 lakh crore.
Recently, the Supreme Court permitted the banks to ‘name and shame' the wilful defaulters by publishing their names in newspapers.
